


the freedom of mortality

by etcortuum



Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: A lot of ghosts - Freeform, F/F, F/M, Multi, Original Character(s), Self-Insert, Slavery, but it's not totally permanent, graphic depictions of violence means what it means, if so then yes to major character death, irregular updates, is it major character death if they're an OC?, panic attacks galore, pineapples as plot devices, sometimes you think you're dead but then you're not
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:27:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24350533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etcortuum/pseuds/etcortuum
Summary: It takes her five years to notice the colour of her hair. That's also when she also notices where she is. It takes another month before she knows who she is (who he is).Or,A remarkably unobservant sort-of self-insert.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 54





	1. certain half-deserted streets

**Author's Note:**

> This got out of hand really quickly, but I figured I'd post anyway. Intend to update on a weekly basis - this might not happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title comes from 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' by T. S. Eliot.

The sky is blue and there are birds flying through the clouds. Leaves have been falling to the ground in droves for the last week and Autumn is nearly over. Fiore is beautiful at this time of year.

This is not Fiore and a change in season makes little difference here. The sands outside the city have been shifted by three separate storms in the past week, and the sun is brighter than it has been in months.

Meitra hates it.

When she walks, it is with a loping gait and a slight limp in her left leg. When she walks, the people in these streets leave her in peace. She scares them - scares them in ways they don't quite understand. She smiles at the thought. This city is pathetic. Its denizens wallow in filth and the high walls surrounding it do little to keep the slave traders out. But this city is her home - has been since she first crawled through the too-big gate in the western wall - and she will keep it in one piece for as long as is physically possible. The double doors ahead of her crack as she kicks them open.

"Which of you sand-crawlers sold Merrip? Tell me, now!"

She's been waiting for a chance to deal with this lot for a while. Now that it's finally happening, she's going to enjoy it. A man at the back of the room starts to stand. Her eyes glow a violent green and he sits down again. The rest of the room panics. With a grin and a cackle, Meitra throws herself into the fray.

Three hours later, the streets are deserted and the saloon by the eastern gate is a smoking ruin. Meitra lopes away with a smirk.

* * *

The sun over Bellum is a hateful thing. It burns the land and the people, and leaves the sand littered with bleached bones. In the North, it is the lifeblood of a failing empire and is worshipped as a god, with shrines and temples crowding the streets of cities and towns alike. Yet, no matter the words of the monks and the preachers, it is not a fair god. Southern Bellum is a wasteland, punctuated by ravaged villages and lawless cities.

In the city of Arma, the governing body is made up of slave traders, pirates, and warrior mages. They have no mayor, no council, no leader. Arma is one of many cities in Southern Bellum to be controlled in such a manner. Arma is also the single most important location for trade in the entirety of the southern half of the country: it lies along the border of Desierto, and its port courts ships from Sin, Enca, Minstrel and Midi. Wars have been fought for control of Arma, and wars will be fought again. In the year X761, Arma is at peace. This peace does not last.

* * *

Mattias owns a bakery and a pawn shop. There is little cross-over between the two, customer-wise, yet he finds that he sees the same faces again and again. Two faces frequent both of his businesses. The first is a boy: he is no more than ten summers old; short and skinny, with no promise of significant future growth. He doesn't know the boy's name, only that he pays good coin for Mattias' bread and accepts pittance for the baubles he pawns. Mattias knows - like he knows that the sun will rise tomorrow - that the boy will never be able to buy back those baubles.

His second regular terrifies Mattias. She keeps no schedule, walking into either shop without regard for the time of day or week. She is tall, bad-tempered, and one of the stronger warrior mages in the city. Unfortunately, this woman is also his protection - she is protection for most of the eastern quarter of Arma - and protection requires payment. Fortunately, her rates are lower than any other gang in the area. Mattias will not complain about money saved.

(If Mattias isn't there to pay, he will return in the morning to find a window broken and the money in the cash register missing.)

* * *

Stumbling over a loose brick, Meitra curses: her leg has been acting up all week and she doesn't have the time to visit a healer. She tells herself she'll go. (She won't.) She lifts her head and sees her destination. The walls are crumbling (this city is crumbling) and the once bright paint has since dulled to a generic brown. Above the door, painted in a different shade of brown, is a sign: 'Pawn Shop'. She smiles. Mattias always pays well.

There is a sudden shout from further down the street and she turns to look. A boy - small, weak - has been cornered against a market stall. As she watches, a large man throws a punch, hitting the boy squarely in the stomach. The bread he had been clutching falls to ground. Meitra is moving before the man can pick it up.

There is a scream as the body of a man falls to the ground - his eyes rolled back in his head - and the bread he had been holding drops to the ground. Meitra grins and the wandering soul now lost in the streets of Arma screams again. The boy stares at her before grabbing the bread and running. Meitra shrugs and turns back to the pawn shop. The loose brick doesn't trip her this time.

When she finally steps back into the street, Mattias is cowering behind the counter and her pocket is significantly heavier. Today was a good day. She'll celebrate this, she thinks, and the best place in the eastern quarter for that kind of celebration is the whore house. Meitra sets off with an imperceptible skip in her step.

She likes Merrip's girls and, after last week's brush with slavery, Merrip owes her big time. Maybe she can convince him to give her a bottle of his finest rum - that'd really add to the fun. There is a certain swagger in her walk when she reaches the Rosea Rosa, and she grins at the girls by the door. The sounds of debauchery, faint at the end of the street, are louder now. If she listens carefully, Meitra can pick out the faint strumming of a lute over the moans and giggles.

Inside, the walls are a dark red, contrasting sharply with the dull brown of the exterior, and draped in curtains and wall hangings. The bronze candelabras and the silver plated serving dishes paint this establishment as one of the wealthiest and most extravagant buildings in the area. Merrip has always liked to feel excessive; not that she can blame him, really, when her own home is just as opulent. There is a single room on the ground floor. It is large enough to hold half the population of the eastern quarter, and is the only point of access to the stairs leading to the rest of the building. Those stairs are currently decorated by scantily clad women, their lace covered skin glistening under the dim lights.

"Meitra, old friend, what can I do for you? A girl? Two? Anything for you!"

Merrip. The vaguely detestable owner. Also the man who owes her his life. Meitra smiles at him. (There are too many teeth in that smile for him to feel comfortable. He shivers.) Somewhere in the room a bottle smashes. A new round of giggling commences.

"Tell you what, Merrip, you get me three of your best girls and a bottle of your finest rum, and I'll look into reducing your debt. How's that?"

Merrip gives her that slimy, customer service, face splitting smile he always gives her, and scuttles back out of the room. Meitra heads towards the stairs. She's halfway up when two laughing women grab her hands and start to pull her the rest of the way. She lets them. This will be a good night.

* * *

Meitra wakes at the crack of dawn to the sound of cannon fire. She swears and leaps out of bed, desperately searching the room for her clothes. One of the women in the bed stirs and starts to sit up. When she sees Meitra balancing on one foot, a sandal half on, she slips back under the covers and curls herself around the two other sleeping women.

A second round of cannon fire starts. As Meitra stumbles down the stairs, her jacket slipping on her shoulders, she plans her route through the city. It takes less than a minute for her to climb up the building and onto the roof, and less time than that to jump across the gap between buildings. As she runs, she keeps an eye on the harbour.

There, in the distance, she can see the black sails of a ship. As another round of cannon fire begins, Meitra lands on her feet by the border of the eastern quarter. In the southern quarter of the city, she can see fires starting. Arma is a dry city. If those fires aren't put out soon, they'll spread to the other quarters. Meitra swears and runs across the border. This is Proelium territory - if she's caught here, it'll start a gang war. But those fires are getting bigger, and she won't see her quarter go down in flames.

There's a water tower next to the closest fire, a stroke of luck she thanks the gods for. It takes one kick to topple the tower supports and another to redirect the fall of the tower. A block of fires is put out. She runs to the next fire. And the next. And the next. She doesn't rest until every fire is out, avoiding the ones being handled by Proelium mages, and she is safely back in the eastern quarter. The pirates are still attacking, but the Proelium mages have called in support from the local pirate crews and are forcing the attackers back. Meitra can rest.

She shambles her way back home - home, with its bright colours, too-many trinkets, and lavish treasures. She is tired, though, and her watchful eyes aren't as watchful as they should be. There is a shuffle behind her, a hit to the back of the head, and then darkness.

When the darkness recedes, Meitra is underground, deep in the sewers of Arma. There are fighters to either side of her and more guards by the door. She sits and waits, tied to the chair beneath her. There is water around her ankles and the smell of rotting flesh in her nostrils. She coughs once, trying to get rid of the smell. It stays. With a screech, the door in front of her swings open. There, in all his rat-like glory, stands Hartol, head of the Proelium gang. Meitra lets loose a string of curses. This was what she had been afraid of.

"Dearest, darling, Mei. I'm hurt! Do you think me incompetent? You must! After all, you did go to all that trouble putting out my little fires. Whatever will I do with you?"

Meitra spits at the ground by his feet. He sighs and signals to the man beside him. Swiftly, a fist meets her stomach. She gasps, unable to breathe.

"Now, Mei, let's try again. What do you think I should do with you? I need a demonstration, see? Something to show that I won't have other gangs meddling in my affairs."

Meitra hates the delight in his tone, feels a cold breath run down his spine. He's right, of course. (She hates that even more.) She shouldn't have interfered. Head of the Odium gang she might be, but compared with Proelium's vast numbers, she is nothing. She spits at him again, blood joining saliva this time, then shouts. "Just you try! I will crush you beneath my heel! I will take your territories, and your people, and your home! Just try and kill me!"

Odium may be weaker, but Meitra is a stronger mage than Hartol will ever be.

Hartol clicks his tongue and sighs, again, when her eyes start to glow green. He waves a hand and the guard to her left slips behind her. Suddenly, the world is dark again. She blinks. Hartol speaks again. "Really, Mei? I thought better of you. I've seen you in action, I know what you're capable of. You should have expected me to make the appropriate arrangements."

For the first time since entering the sewers, Meitra feels a spark of fear. She can't see and she can't fight. (She can't stop Hartol's monologue.)

Hartol is talking again, but she isn't listening. The dark is too dark, the cloth over her eyes too soft. She can't see, and it's killing her. If she weren't so frightened - so angry - she'd be impressed. Arma may be filled with traders, but the people are stupid. They do not think for themselves, they do not seek knowledge. That Hartol has identified her weak point is - well, he has her respect for this, even if for nothing else. But Meitra is frightened, and so she does not think to be impressed. Instead, she rages. She drops any pretence of listening to Hartol and starts to scream. She knows that it's useless, but it irritates him and that's enough for her. Her scream cuts out when one of guards hits her again - the face this time. She can feel a tooth coming loose. As the blood pools in her mouth, warm and sharp, Hartol speaks again. He's getting frustrated now. She smiles a little, spits the blood collected in her mouth in his general direction.

"You think yourself so clever, don't you? You think you can run around as you like, and there won't be consequences? Do you think I'm scared of a gang war? Against your pathetic followers? Think again."

There are shuffling rustling noises behind her, then a scraping sound. She tenses up. Something heavy settles on her head and the cloth covering her eyes is removed. She still can't see. Something like panic creeps into her bones (she's lying to herself; it is panic).

"You see, dear Mei, I thought to myself: what can I possibly do that will teach this stubborn desert-worm? And then...it came to me! You, sweet Mei, need your eyes. And me...well, I could really do without them. And so we come to this. I'm sure you'll work it out quickly." Hartol finishes his speech with a laugh. Meitra can't lie to herself anymore: she's terrified. Terrified and so, so angry. And then the pain sets in. She starts to scream.

* * *

Blackness. An overwhelming emptiness surrounds her. Noise is still there, but it seems so distant now. The stone beneath her is too rough and the smell of rotting flesh is worse now.

_Black_

_Black_

_Black_

Meitra can't even tell if it is black - it seems more like an absence of colour, than any specific one.

_Black_

The pain, though, that's the worst. When she'd first awoken it hadn't been noticable, but now that she's thinking she can't concentrate on anything else. It's a dull ache in her skull, persistent and crippling. It's a burn in the place where her eyes used to be, empty and scorching. And it's a scratching, bleeding tear where her magic sits - unable to get out, unable to be used. She wants to cry but she can't, not anymore. That just makes it worse.

_Black_

_Black_

She tries to lift herself on her arms, feels then wobble and shake, exhausted by the mere thought of movement. Somehow, she manages to stand. (She is _weak_.) Her hands hit the walls, trying to find an exit. She moves to the right. There! A door. When she reaches the handle, she wants to sob: the door is locked. A high pitched whine fills the air and she starts to scratch at the wood. It takes her far too long to realise that the sound is coming from her. The whine gets louder.

_Black_

Suddenly, Meitra falls back: the door has been pushed open with too much force. A man laughs. She feels hands grabbing at her; her feet, her legs, her hips, her arms. She struggles. The man laughs again and the grabbing hands lift her. She screams. There is a noise and then the air in her lungs leaves her - they've punched her again. She stops struggling.

They carry her for what seems like hours, the steady splashing of feet in sewage near hypnotic. Then they drop her. She hits the ground with her shoulder first and shrieks as she feels the bones shift. The same man from before laughs again. She wants to kill him. She tries to crawl away but the ground - sand? - keeps shifting. She feels like she's barely moved. There is the sound of foot steps retreating and she moves with more urgency. Then, silence.

She is alone.


	2. alone with Mona Lisa

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this! I am so excited by the kudos I received.
> 
> The title for this chapter comes from an essay by Jeanette Winterson, 'Art Objects'.

Sand.

It fills the places where her eyes used to be and slides down her throat. It clogs up her ears and blocks her nose. She is sand. She will die here.

Then, not-sand. Not-sand is cool, and damp. Not-sand lifts her from the ground and walks. She drifts.

Somewhere in the haze between sand and not-sand is Meitra. She doesn't think, doesn't move, barely breathes. ( _Who is Meitra?_ )

Then cold. It hits like a wall, harsh, impenetrable. She feels the sand trickling away. It hurts. Not-sand is still there.

Her eyes are gone. Taken. She knows this. There is something burning somewhere deep inside her, like a fire with too much fuel or a storm in a locked room. It aches.

Then, she takes a breath. ( _I am Meitra._ )

* * *

Five weeks.

Five weeks before she wakes up. Five weeks since she was taken. Five weeks since she had lost her eyes. Five weeks with her magic building up.

Five weeks in a stranger's home.

When Meitra wakes up, the only sign is the change in her breathing. The girl (not-sand?) next to her notices anyway. She picks up the cloth on Meitra's forehead and replaces it with a cooler one. Then, she settles beside her.

"I know you're awake. You don't have to pretend."

Meitra slowly sits up. The world is still dark. (Her eyes are still missing.)

"I found you in the sand. Where did you come from?"

Meitra doesn't speak. The girl waits. Eventually, Meitra decides to respond. Her lips stick to each other as she opens them and her tongue feels too big inside her mouth. Everything feels dry. Instead of speech, Meitra hears only a grating rasp. She tries again. The same rasp.

The girl squeaks and pushes something against Meitra's hand. She flexes her fingers. Glass. Cold glass. She grabs it. The glass is guided to her lips and then tipped. She feels water - real, fresh water - glide down her throat. She tries to speak again.

"Who...are...you?"

Her words still rasp, but at least they are words now. She hears a whispering, shuffling noise. The girl shifts closer. Meitra tenses.

"I saved you. You were in the sand. What were you doing there?"

Meitra growls. "What is...your name?"

The girl sighs and then she is silent again. The silence stretches, filling the blackness in Meitra's head.

Then, "Swallow. My name is Swallow."

Meitra nods. "I come from Arma. They took my eyes and left me. Where are we?"

"This is Quedado. We are in Desierto. You weren't anywhere near a city when I found you. Did you walk?"

The girl is strange. Her words lisp and she often pauses mid-sentence, as if searching for the right way to say something. She confuses Meitra. Why did she help? No one ever does anything without the promise of a reward; she knows this. So what does this girl - Swallow - want?

"Why did you help me?"

"Why do anything? I wanted to."

She doesn't know how to do this. When people want something, she knows what to say; when people take something, she knows what to do; but when people (Swallow - just Swallow) do something because they can? The world doesn't work like that. No one does something for nothing. Meitra is angry. This girl is lying. She has to be. What will _she_ take?

Meitra throws her hands forwards. They meet rough fabric and a cold body and smooth skin. No. Not skin...

Scales. Those are scales.

She throws herself back. "What are you? What do you want?" By the last word, she's shouting.

There is a sliding sound, then a hand grabs her own. It is colder than she expects. The hand pulls her forward gently, carefully. "I am Swallow. We are...lagartija. You have no word for us. I do not want anything from you. I want to help you."

The lisp is oddly soothing. And...this girl, Swallow, she is not human. Perhaps she is telling the truth. Meitra resigns herself to the girl's help. "My...eyes. You cleaned them?"

Swallow snorts. "You have no eyes. I cleaned the skin and wrapped your head. You should let it heal before anything else."

Meitra nods. She will do that. And now, she will rest. She slumps in Swallow's arms, the oblivion of sleep catching her quickly.

* * *

It is dark here. There are no lights, no stars, no darker places. _Black_. Then, a whisper in the darkness - a growing echo, bouncing off of nonexistent walls. It hums. There! A spark! A light! A sun! So bright in this strange place. It whirrs softly to itself, seeming to dance in place.

She reaches for it; grabs, clutches, claws. It is just out of reach. It is always just out of reach. A startled, stuttered sigh. And then-

_A pause_.

The moment stretches. She can feel the light growing, yet never changing, her perspective thrown by the intensity of the pause. Silence builds like thunder, a rumbling roaring nothingness. It aches in her ears.

Then. Then. Then.

It _breaks_.

The world is there again. A bursting, screaming, too-bright everythingness. She doesn't understand. (Her eyes are gone.)

The world _is_.

She screams (again).

* * *

Meitra sleeps, and dreams.

Minutes pass. Hours, days, weeks. She sleeps. Her eyes will not return. Her magic, though...

There are threads of green wrapping around the bandages on her head, weaving through the gaps. They pop and crackle, hissing in the light. They are brighter at night. These threads slide and twist constantly, a new dance and an old one, intertwining and mingling and becoming something different.

(Swallow watches. She waits, and watches.)

As they dance, the green threads fade, a lime - almost yellow - colour replacing them. The threads continue to shift. The places where her eyes used to be have healed now, but some things are still changing.

Three weeks pass and then Meitra wakes up.

The sun is bright that day, the blue sky almost white with light, not a cloud on the horizon, not a bird in the air. The sand burns beneath Swallow's feet. She feels nothing.

Claws scrape away loose sand from a doorway, catching on hinges and locks. Those same claws unearth a doormat - old and beaten, ingrained with dirt - and hang it on a low wall. A tail starts to lash it: the previous day's sandstorm lasted for hours.

When Meitra sits up, the darkness follows her. She thinks of her eyes and wants to cry. She doesn't. (She has no tears, not anymore.)

Then, in the all consuming blackness, she sees a star. It grows closer and closer, accompanied by a scratching shuffling noise. And then the star speaks: "How are you? Did you sleep well?"

Swallow. Is she a star? Has she always been one? Meitra breathes and wonders.

"I am...well. Did you take care of me again?"

The star glows a little brighter. "I did! Although - I don't know your name."

Ah. "My name is Meitra. Thank you."

The star is still so bright. If she looks closer, Meitra can see the faint outline of a humanoid inside the star. This must be Swallow. But what is the star?

The answer hits her as Swallow starts to move away, the light dimming as she moves around: this is Swallow's soul.

Perhaps losing her eyes will not be as bad as she thinks. (It still aches and will, she thinks, continue to ache.)


	3. the anguish of the marrow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still on time! This is something of a record for me. Thank you so much for the kudos, it makes me feel warm and fuzzy. And thank you to my lone bookmarker! You made me smile.
> 
> I hope you like this chapter. More people die in this one, in case that might be something you have an issue with.
> 
> The chapter title comes from T. S. Eliot again, this time 'Whispers of Immortality'.

The days with Swallow are languid. Meitra makes up for lost time, working to regain the muscles and awareness she once had. Even without her eyes, she will never be considered harmless.

Hours are spent in the sand, her time split between exercising her physical body and retraining the magic still building within her core. She worries that the burning she feels isn't anger but, instead, her magic - too much power contained within her, desperate to be of use, eating its way through her body. She likes to forget those particular fears.

Swallow often joins her, demonstrating a strange, yet effective, fighting style: fluid strikes and deep cuts, combined with quick swipes of her scaled tail. Meitra enjoys the challenge that is fighting this lizard woman.

Her time with Swallow is good, but Meitra is itching to leave. Four months after arriving in a storm of blood and sand, she walks through the door to the hut and away into the desert. She has a general direction in mind and a bandage across her empty eyes, a small pack with water and food, and a walking stick. Swallow waves from the doorway.

Walking for hours (days) on end is tiring, but Meitra is determined; she may never return to Arma, but there are other cities, other lands. So she walks.

On the fourth day, she sees a lone spark racing across the sand. A lizard, perhaps, or a mouse.

Day seven brings with it a sandstorm. Meitra buries herself inside her cloak and beneath the sand, then waits for it to end. She loses half a day in the sand.

On the ninth day, she sees a galaxy. Hundreds of thousands of stars dancing around each other. This is a city. Her pace remains the same despite the sudden burst of energy filling her legs. As she draws closer to the city, her head begins to ache. She stops ten feet before the nearest star; any further and she may never see another star again - she can feel her magic leaping inside of her, charging through her veins. She walks backwards and feels the sparks of power die down. She will wait a while before entering the city. She doesn't mind; a city is with the wait.

* * *

Three days. Three days before her magic stops dragging itself - with or without her - towards the many souls so close by. She spends that time seated by the gates, watching as stars walk past her without pause. She runs out of food by the second evening. (She survives; she has known hunger worse than this.)

Walking through the city gates is a relief. Her lips quirk into an awkward half-smile, teeth peering from behind cracked skin. The sun is low in the sky, barely having risen before she was racing for the galaxy ahead of her. Now that she is finally here, the stars seem less impressive. She grins. (She prefers it this way.)

* * *

The citizens of Año watch her stride through streets and alleyways. She is not lost, does not _get_ lost. They feel something like fear when she smiles and they learn to leave her in peace. Meitra lives in the underbelly of the city - hunting criminals and telling fortunes - for five months before her life changes again.

It is a strange day for Año in May, X761: clouds gather in the skies and rain floods the streets. The first rainstorm in three years has arrived.

Meitra hates it just as much as she hates the unbearable heat. Deep in the rat maze of the slums, the small sanctuary she has created has a leaky roof. The bucket beneath the drip is steadily filling, an irritating plink echoing with every drop of water. Meitra sits away from the bucket, bundled in and beneath every piece of fabric she owns. (She hates the cold.)

A sudden, frantic knocking starts. She waits and hopes the visitor leaves. They don't. With a groan, she heaves herself from her nest and answers the door with a scowl.

They're a pale pink colour - not salmon or rose, something lighter, undefined. She wonders if their personality is a reflection. And then they speak.

(The colour is misleading. Highly misleading.)

"Are you telling fortunes today? Only, the rain is getting worse, and I don't like the look of the wind, and did you know that-"

She cuts him off when she slams the door in his face. Rude, perhaps, but warranted: he talks far too much. Outside, the rain falls harder. She smiles a little. Then he starts to talk again. She scowls and retreats to her nest. The chatter is endless, rising and falling with the crash of water overhead. Ten minutes, and she gives up.

The door opens with an ominous creek and the soul (pinkbrightshiny) slips through the crack. She thinks he's probably smiling - his voice certainly implies it.

"I knew my charms would win you over eventually."

She snorts and walks away.

"Hey, wait! I didn't mean it! I'm sorry! Uh... Could you tell my fortune? Please? That's what you do, isn't it?"

How old is he? He's almost childish, and yet a child would have more confidence. He is...surprising. She wonders how he ended up at her door. (She doesn't wonder for long.) She lets a sigh leave her lips. With a shuffling gait - impeded by the various blankets dripping from her shoulders - Meitra makes her way to the side room. This is the second and only other room in the hut. It has two doors: one leads to the rest of her home, the other opens directly onto the street - this second door is the one usually used by customers. In the centre of the room sits a table; low, worn and slightly muddied, it holds two things - a crystal ball and a pack of cards. It had taken a lot of work and a lot of bounties to be able to afford either, but they lend a certain to credence to her second profession. Fortune telling may be a sham (at least when she does it), but she doesn't need to tell her clients that.

He sits by the table, his feet scuffing the aging wooden floor. She kneels opposite him, looks at the place where she imagines his eyes would be, and says, "I see your future. If you stay in this hut, you will die."

He laughs. It's loud and happy and all the things she hates. (All the things she wants.)

"Go on! Do it properly. Please?"

She sniffs and stands. She will not tell his future. Not out of any perceived (or existing) slight, and not out of anger, but because she cannot tell him his future. She is no fortune-teller - not really - and this man, for reasons she can't define, does not deserve a false future. (She doesn't think she could bear it, the weight that would come with lying to this man.)

And so she stands, and lopes back through the door into the hut. She returns minutes later with a tray in her hands. Tea.

"I can't tell fortunes. I'm a bounty hunter, generally. This is for when business is slow. Now, have some tea."

They do not drink their tea in silence; he cannot manage five minutes of quiet, let alone an entire meal. He chatters and natters and gossips and plots. He never seems to stop. She hates ( _loves_ ) it. She'd like it if he stopped. (She'd be happy if he spoke to her forever.)

And then, he leaves. She stares at the doorway for hours afterwards and wonders if he was real.

* * *

Pink.

Soft, grasping, smiling.

She likes this star, it wraps around itself and then wraps around her. Warm, comforting, _home_. Pink, but not quite. Pale, closer to white, but not washed out.

So bright and alive. So warm. She doesn't want to let this one go.

(She doesn't let this one go.)

* * *

He comes back, day after day. She doesn't know why.

They have tea, day after day, and they talk. (He does most of the talking.) They build worlds in that tiny room connected to her hut.

And then, he misses a day. She finds him two alleys over, gasping breaths and torn skin, his soul a little dimmer than it should be. She carries him back over rough ground, the added weight making her limp more pronounced. He heals in four days and doesn't leave after that. (She can't get rid of him; doesn't want to.)

He's there when she comes back covered in someone else's blood. He's there when she comes back painted in her own. He's always there, and she loves it. He fixes her with neat stitches, helps her with soul deep smiles, loves her with pinksoftwarm wrapped around her. He's there for her. (There like only Swallow was. She left Swallow; will she leave him? She worries at night, when the stars are all in bed, the blood is washed away, and he is lying next to her. She doesn't want to leave.)

Now, they have tea at the tall table beside her bed. Chairs that rock and cups that clink and tea with maybe-mold. The tea is always ready: waiting for her when she finishes telling fortunes, warm for him when he comes back from looting ships (it had taken too long for her to find that out; why had he thought she would care?), strong and hot for her when she comes back in the dark, loping through streets and dripping blood.

(She doesn't let go.)

This, she thinks, is happiness.

* * *

It's doesn't last. It never does.

She had been right, when she had told his future all that time ago.

Perhaps, she shouldn't have even pretended.

(Would it have been better?)

* * *

They last three years. In that time, they have a child. A beautiful little red-eyed boy with her blue hair. A December baby. She likes to watch him, to see something so good that had come from her. (For him, she would stay in one spot until roots stretched beneath the earth and moss grew between her toes.)

They love him. (He is small and soft and his soul is always grabbing, reaching, palerednotpinksobright.) She loves him so much.

It happens in the small hours of the morning. Slavers, too many to count, beat down the door. They grab her boys and drag her from her bed. Her love (warmbrightpink) fights and fights and then he falls. It happens so quickly she barely even notices. One moment he is there, the souls of animals dancing around him, melding with his own, and then the next she can't see any pink. She doesn't think about it. For now, she has to get to her little boy and run. (She will cry without tears later. There is no time now.)

And then.

One of them grabs her little boy.

Redbrightpalenotpink flies through the air too quickly for her to catch him.

She hears a crunch.

Someone swears.

There is no red here, she cannot see him.

And

then

she

_screams_.


	4. of Socrates and Seneca

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Life caught up with me and so my update schedule was shot to pieces. But I'm back!
> 
> This time the chapter title comes from the same journal as the title of story. The author of one essay used Seneca and Socrates as examples of people who chose their own deaths. It seemed fitting.
> 
> Again, thank you for reading! Every time the number of hits increases I do a little dance of happiness. Please enjoy! (And if you find any errors, please point then out.)

There's blood in the streets. Most of it was washed away in the morning shower, but there are still streaks here and there. It doesn't stand out in these parts. Broken glass liters the gutters and old paint peels off of moldering doors. There's a muffled scream down an alleyway - no one cares, no one will go looking.

In the hours between midnight and dawn, a group of men stumble down this deserted street. They are heading towards the docks. As they walk, two members of the group start to sing, the rest quickly following with a jaunty tune. It carries on the wind, rustling down the street, past closed windows and bolted doors, slipping through the cracks in a fence, dashing over sand dunes and swaying with the waves when it hits them, until it creeps through an open porthole and into a crowded hold. Row upon row of people sit chained to the floor, their wrists thin and their faces thinner. A woman starts to cry.

In a far corner sits a child. There are blood coated bandages around it's head and dirt paints it's face. The man next to it hasn't heard it breathe in half an hour - perhaps, after hours of desperate laboured gasps, it has given in. He is glad; no child should suffer like this.

Against the ship, waves crash, and the jaunty tune of the drunken sailors is lost on the morning breeze.

* * *

There is a scream and a thud. Her eyes flicker open. A sharp inhale from beside her, then: "Gods. I thought you were dead!"

She wonders at that: at the strange inflection in the voice; at the mention of more than one god; at the possibility that _she might have been dead_.

She panicks. Why would she be dead? Why does her head ache? Where is she? _Why are her hands tied?_

She screams.

* * *

The next time she wakes up, the world is dark. She can see faint shapes flickering in the near perfect blackness, strange silhouettes all crowded together. She tries to talk, to whisper, to make a sound, but her throat is scraped raw. It aches.

She whimpers in the darkness; she can hear it echoing around her. From beside her, another groan. She turns her head and sees cloth - rough, brown, old - and, beyond the cloth, skin - rougher, darker, older. She looks up and freezes: eyes shine in the dark, bright and dirt-brown. (She wonders at that: is the world brown, now? What has happened to colour?)

The eyes blink and then seem to shine a little brighter. "You didn't die."

Blinking in return, she considers for a moment. Then: "Did you think I would? Why? Where are we? What happened? _Why is everything brown?_ "

The eyes look startled. They flicker a little in the light, darting across her face and then some. They close, shuddering, then open again. She thinks she can see pain lingering in them. The voice connected to the eyes speaks again, and she realises that they are old - like their skin, their clothes - and male. They croak a little. (Is there any water?)

"This is a boat. We are waiting to be sold. You don't remember them? The ones who dragged you here?"

She must look confused, surprised, because the voice starts again almost as soon as it finishes: "Your head...they brought you in covered in blood. I think you must have put up quite a fight. You have bandages around your head. Does that help?"

She wriggles a little, hands reaching up only to stop short. She tugs and feels weights around her wrists tug back. "Are these cuffs?"

There's a nagging feeling in the back of her mind: things are too big; her arms too weak, too small; her voice is higher than before. She ignores the feeling with the skills of one who has practiced stubborn ignorance throughout their entire life. (She is an old woman, nothing will surprise her ever again.) She peers up at the old man beside her and starts to open her mouth again when she freezes. _Everything_ freezes. Somewhere, lurking at the edge of her vision, is an orange glow. It must have been there for some time, getting brighter and brighter, with her only now noticing it. She shivers a little and tries to turn to it, to look at the orange. It slithers from her sight. She hears, just for a moment, a fading whisper. "Idiot," it calls her. (Perhaps she has gone mad.)

The world comes back to life.

She closes her mouth, turns back to the old man beside her. And then she cries.

(She never used to cry this easily. Is it shock? Confusion? Or is it something else?)

* * *

Somewhere in the dark, between the creaking floorboards and the swaying lanterns, comes a streak of orange. It slithers from the place between worlds, the place where old things - strong things, hungry things - lurk. Here, in a broken hut in the slums of an overfilled city, the streak of orange seeps through a crack in the world. It hovers, waiting, then slinks through the doorway into the morning light, pausing as it crosses the threshold. (There is power to be found in doorways - the kind of power that summons and subverts and commands; the kind of power that is feared and coveted.)

In the open air, the orange mass peers at the cobbles beneath what would be feet. Blood - wet, sticky and oh so red - lingers on the stone. It has sunk into the dirt and will give life to a new generation of weeds. By the blood rests a body. He is young, his face slack in death and limbs stiff in the way that bodies are wont to be. He did not die gently (he screamed, begged, pleaded - desperate and angry). She - for the orange mass recalls a life before this - remembers the pain of his loss. She hopes that he is at least content, if not happy, wherever it is that he is now. (Funny, isn't it? Funny, that a seith mage does not know what happens after death.)

But, and this will be the cause of much speculation in future years, there is far more blood than should have come from this one man. In the gutter to the side lies a hand. It is disconnected from anything that may once have been living and it sits beneath the broken outline of a tall and well-built man. The wall beneath the outline is charred and bears the marks of an explosion. Something - or someone - used too much magic here. More blood spatters the walls of the hut, dripping from awnings and soaking into the putty around window frames. Marks and outlines scatter the alley, painting an explosion larger and stronger than might be produced through any magic items currently found on the black market. Orange streams of light begin to filter through the sunlight and the mass in the alley grows. She remembers this power - it was hers, once upon a time. She pulls and pulls, feasts on the magic which lingers in the pain and anguish that haunts this place. The orange lights glow brighter.

After a time, a woman forms. She stares out at the world through green eyes no longer covered by wrappings. Her green eyes are all the colour left, her previously blue hair and dark skin now one common, shining orange. She takes one last look at the man on the ground; remembers a soul so pale and delicate, a soul so sharply contrasted by the man it rested in. She sighs and moves on.

There is a boat to find, and a city and desert between it and her. A flash of orange, a vanishing of light, and she is gone, sinking into the fabric of the universe and moving at incomprehensible speeds.

(She has a child to find.)

* * *

It had been some years ago that she had first seen the program, watching it with a tiny girl and a smaller boy, both more excited by the flashing colours and the loud noises than by the characters or the plot. Now, she watches in the company of a much older girl, a handmade scarf winding around her neck. Fourteen years seems like nothing, and yet it seems like everything. The tiny girl is twenty one now, the boy eighteen. She watches as her granddaughter cheers for a main character in a language she has never spoken and wonders at the way the world has changed. (She is glad that this program is still around, that her granddaughter has something to cling to without feeling too much like a child.) Now, as the battle reaches its climax, she wonders if this will be the last episode she ever sees. Will the dragon be defeated? The dark wizard beaten? Will the power of friendship triumph? Despite her best efforts, she finds herself desperate to know.

The episode ends, the plot still unresolved, and her granddaughter leaves. The flowers by the hospital bed are wilting, and the light through the blinds is dimmed by the layers of smog in the city beyond the window. She reaches up and clasps the rough wool around her neck, hoping that her family will forgive her for her bad timing.

She dies in her sleep at one in the morning, alone and lonely, her last thoughts a final pondering of a show aimed at an audience many years younger than herself. When her granddaughter arrives, she cries and hangs onto the scarf she has been handed. A boy holds her close and their parents enter the room three hours later. It is solemn and sad, but these people will go on, for that is the way of the world.

* * *

In the hold of the ship, she shivers. This time she has been awake for well over an hour. She shifts uncomfortably, her bladder full and her wrists aching from the cuffs around them. After another half hour she realises that she is unlikely to be given either a toilet or the dignity of relieving herself anywhere else. The air already smells of piss and suffering. (After weeks bedridden in a hospital, the thought of soiling herself isn't quite as off-putting as it had once been.)

The issue, however, is that the thought of a toilet has brought her attention to her own anatomy, and the differences she is now identifying. Most notably, the apparent change in her gender. She finally looks down at herself (pulls her head out of the sand). She sees a flat chest, young skin, and small, knobbly knees. She isn't old. She isn't female. She isn't a _she_ anymore. As the world goes black for the nth time in as many hours, she feels her bladder give in. Waking up will be uncomfortable, she thinks.

(Who is she? She remembers dying, now; remembers the hospital. She remembers her granddaughter and a handmade scarf. She remembers _dying_ , and if that isn't enough of an indicator that something is wrong, then the changes to her age and gender make for a brilliant second clue. If she were awake, she'd be screaming again.)


	5. the art of scraping through

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title comes from the Hozier song: 'Someone New'.
> 
> I finished a whole heck ton of things recently, so that was nice. But now I have to get straight back to work and I am knackered. So, have another chapter, because I finally finished it. TTFN! (Ta Ta For Now...)

Slipping through the universe, she can see sparks and bursts - stars, real stars, mingling with the stars she has known all her life (the stars she still knows, even in death). It takes seconds (hours, minutes, years, nanoseconds) and then she stands on a deck, waves lapping at the ship and men laughing as they shift cargo into the hold. She glows brighter as anger filters through: she can see more of her stars inside of the barrels that are so carelessly rolled around and tossed down stairs. She wishes (wishes with everything she once had) that she could turn these men into the soulless husks they deserve to be. With a scowl, she sinks through wooden planks and beams, sinks into the striking gloom of the hold.

The rows of people are expected, and yet, somehow, they still surprise her. (Perhaps she had thought that they'd be kept in their barrels for the entire journey.) She swears - briefly, sharply, with _feeling_ \- then turns her attention to the faces before her. They shiver; though whether from cold, or fear, or illness seems to depend on the individual. They shake all the same, one massive, writhing group, held together by iron chains and the ache of shared suffering. She hates this. (It reminds her of other things: of dark sewers and blinding pain, of nights spent shivering in a too-damp hovel, of a childhood rife with hunger and disease. It reminds her of things she would rather forget.)

She looks at her feet briefly, as if worried they might have disappeared. (A valid concern, these days.) She heaves a superficial sigh (her lungs need no air) and starts her search. Her boy is here - she knows it, knows it in bones that no longer exist and with a heart that will never beat again. Her search is short: he is not here. She cannot see him, redpinkpalebright, cannot feel him. It throws her. _He should be here._

And then...

And then the screaming starts. She sees the men from the deck above ( _slavers_ ) scrambling through the hatch in the ceiling, racing down stairs, all frantic to kill the noise. She turns slowly, watching the people around her react, and finds the source of the noise. The child is tiny, barely old enough to be away from its mother, and wrapped in so many bandages it may as well be mummified. The old man beside it seems both terrified and relieved. A relative? She moves closer and feels something in her crack. (She puts it down to her holding a semi-corporeal form for too long. She tries not to think about it.)

As the slavers finally reach the child, the screaming stops. The small body slumps towards the old man. A boy - tall, lean, roughly clothed - reaches for the bandages around the child's head. As he unwraps them, the cracked thing in her starts to crumble further. Finally, the last wrapping is removed. She desperately pushes away the part of her that recognises some of those features, that remembers a body in an alleyway with too much blood, and a handsome face (never pretty) staring back at her from a mirror in some overpriced brothel. Then he lifts an eyelid to check something - for consciousness? for life? - and she feels the cracked thing shatter, combust, explode into millions of tiny fragments. Red eyes tinged a familiar green stare out at nothing.

She _breaks_.

Her child is _gone_. She cannot see paleredpink anywhere, cannot feel him here. Instead, there is a body identical to his - a body that _feels_ like his - and contained within it and wrapping around it is a shade of bluepurplepaleskyyellow that leaves her cold and empty. No. Not empty. _Angry_. Someone has _replaced_ her son. Someone _dares_ to wear his face. She will not allow this!

She rages like the storm she feels rising outside the ship, rages like the bomb she was when she died with too much anger in her heart and too much magic in her body. She rages with the power of a thousand suns, and ten thousand hurricanes, and a million sand storms. She rages.

And then, just as quickly, she stops. She stops because the bandages have been replaced and hours have passed and the old man is talking to the _abomination_. It sounds...scared. (It should be! It should fear for itself!) She listens as it panics, as it questions. She watches it flounder as it realises that its hands are cuffed. And then, when it finally seems to be shutting down, she whispers to it. "Idiot." She watches it relax - just a little - and then watches as the tears track their way down its face. Perhaps, she thinks, it is not completely at fault. She will stay to watch, and to judge.

Meitra of Arma sinks into the threads and fabric around her, watches stars pass her by, and waits for the stranger before her to recover.

* * *

Waking up is both uncomfortable and one of the most relieving experiences of her life (lives?). She's alive! And that beats everything, slavery, magic lights, and body disphoria be damned. She almost grins, ready to laugh out of sheer joy at not being _dead_ (cold, buried, old, lonely), when she chokes.

One coughing fit later and the euphoria is severely diminished.

(She grins again, freedom racing through her veins.)

Without the sheer magnificence of life clouding her vision, her stomach starts to sink. She's alive, certainly, but she's also alone. Her children aren't here; her granddaughter is sobbing in some impersonal scrubbed-clean hospital room and she isn't there to hold her. This is _wrong_. She shouldn't be here without them - shouldn't be here without her family at her side.

She curls in on herself, her feet tucking in beneath her. It is suddenly difficult to swallow. (She can feel her eyes stinging, can see the signs of a panic attack a mile away.) She shivers despite the stuffy atmosphere of the hold and clutches at her sides. The old man beside her is asleep (or dead, she can't tell). She is so, vastly, definitively, _alone_.

She doesn't know how long she spends mourning her own death and the things (and people) it had robbed her of. By the time she unfurls, the old man is watching her steadily with the eyes of a concerned grandparent. (She recognises that look. She saw it aimed at her throughout a childhood of rationing and recovery and she saw it in the mirror when she thought about her own grandchildren. This, at least, is familiar.) She scowls at him and tries to make herself seem more intimidating than a blind, wet gerbil. It doesn't seem to work.

He passes her a corner of dry, rock-like bread. She affectionately dubs it dwarf bread when she feels her gums groan as she bites into it. It takes the edge off the panic.

He smiles toothlessly and offers her a tin mug filled with water. She gulps it quickly and immediately regrets it, her stomach rebelling and her throat screaming. She coughs and splutters, then chokes briefly. It takes a minute or two before she can breathe without wheezing.

It aches, but at least she won't starve now. Without any form of entertainment, and without functioning vocal chords, she closes her eyes and sleeps.

(She dreams of love, family and warmth. She dreams of things she desperately wants.)

* * *

The old man's name is Lonskot, and he likes to talk. He talks to her of his homeland, a place so small it could barely be called a village, let alone a town. He speaks of ancient tales and recent stories, tells her about the age of dragons and the Queen in the West and the death and destruction caused by one dark mage (a warlord, a terror, a villain). (Somewhere, deep inside, she remembers a story about a heartbroken young man longing for a family - and then longing for death.) He tells her about the stars that fell to the ground and stayed and about the knights in the East. He talks and talks and she is happy to listen. Some of it is even familiar. (She doesn't like to think about why, doesn't want those ideas to linger.)

An old man named Lonskot saves her from herself with stories and laughter. For that, she will love him till her last breath.

But he is not the only one. In the dim shadows and between grey people stands a woman - her face is set in a permanent scowl. She never looks anywhere else, not even when she flinches at the harsh rattling coughs of the young woman two rows away. It's unsettling. (She tries to avoid thinking about the strange woman and what she might mean.)

And then the woman talks. She starts simply: "I hate you."

It almost seems like a bit of a stretch - how can this woman possibly know anything about her? And yet she can feel the hatred, the agony, the disdain, in every word. It burns in ways she hadn't known before.

After that though, the woman doesn't really stop. She fills up the silences previously left by Lonskot, telling rambling tales of stars and deserts and lizard women and sand children. She talks a lot about a knight - one without armour, and without a horse, and without a king, but a knight nonetheless. He was brave and funny and kind, she says. He liked black tea, she says. He would have loved you, she says. Sometimes, faded shapes swirl around the woman. They make up animals: tigers, snakes, foxes, large birds, lizards, things that snarl and bite and claw, and things that rustle in the sand grass. They are always a faint pinkish colour, and the woman never seems to see them. (She wonders if, perhaps, the woman is simply ignoring them out of some strange sense of self preservation. Perhaps it hurts to look at them. Or perhaps she's overthinking it.)

She listens to the stories - all of the stories - and wonders at this strange new world she has found herself in. It seems fantastical. And yet, her last one was fantastical as well, wasn't it? Rainforests and jungles, enormous birds and ancient reptiles, machines capable of approximating human thoughts. Perhaps this is the same sort of world after all.

* * *

They stopped, once, when a man jumped over board and tried to swim for freedom with manacled hands and weights around his feet. He made little headway before a slaver jumped in after him and, in less than a minute, had caught him and slit his throat. They left the body to sink beneath the waves and carried on, one man lighter and yet infinitely heavier under the weight of fear and loss.

(Yes. Different in some ways, and yet just the same in others. Cruelty carries many faces and only one heart.)

It is around this time that she decides to embrace this new life of hers. And embracing it means accepting everything. She decides, after much consideration, that _she_ might as well be _he_ , now. It seems easier, less liable to lead to panic attacks and breakdowns. (He ignores the way he won't look in a mirror - or the sea, or their water cups, or reflective surfaces in general; ignores the way he keeps his hair short enough that he never sees it; ignores the way that starvation lets him pretend he's just another skinny, hungry child in some other world. He knows those thoughts won't help.)

(And maybe, if he cries at night and longs to, once again, be that dying old woman, maybe no one will notice.)

* * *

Lonskot is hardly an unbiased narrator. He is old and weary, and he can be more focused on his next meal than on the child sitting next to him, but he likes to think that he is helping. The boy speaks more, these days - even if he does tend to talk to thin air.

He was so frightened and heartbroken in the beginning; it had terrified Lonskot. He had thought: "this is it, he's going to die now." But he hadn't - the boy had pulled through. It had seemed almost miraculous. (But that wasn't right. You didn't get miracles in these waters.)

With time, and more than a little bit of effort, the boy starts to talk about himself. He has no memory, he says. He does not know his own name, doesn't know how old he is or where he came from. But he does tell stories sometimes - tells them as if he were reciting them. Lonskot isn't sure if he's noticed, or if he just does it absent-mindedly. It gives an old man hope, though, that the boy may one day know himself. For now, he'll just be 'the boy'.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE 29/09/2020: I won't be updating for a while, in case anyone was wondering. I've got a bunch of things to do (exams...😟) and I'm also going to try and find a laptop, because I've been writing this on my phone and it is really exhausting to keep track of. So, no updates for a while, and I may go back and edit previous chapters. (I'll let you know if that happens.)


	6. youth is wasted on the young

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title comes from a quote by George Bernard Shaw, however the exact wording comes from a paraphrasing of Shaw's quote by Ann Pinchot. If you happen to be interested, I used this website when trying to find the original author: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/09/07/young/
> 
> In other news: I'm back! Whether this carries over into a set updating schedule is uncertain, but here! Have another chapter! (I feel like a magic eight ball now...) Hope everyone is doing well.

It's a strange thing to know that you have no name of your own. His old name belongs to a dying old woman confined to a hospital bed and he can't find it in himself to claim it. Beyond the occasional "boy" or "kid" though, he has no name for this new him. It aches just a little bit, to have no name, to feel less than he was. He ignores the feeling with the skill of one who buried their head in the sand long ago.

Lonskot is kind: he never brings up the lack of name, settles for "boy" or some variation on "hey you". It's comforting to know that his only friend doesn't care.

He tries only once to ask the orange woman. She sneers and spits, turns on her phantasmic heel and vanishes between gaps in the world. He takes it as the dismissal it is. (If it stings to think that she might know and simply won't tell him - well, what doesn't hurt here?)

* * *

After weeks of little movement and poor lighting they are dragged on deck - not all of them, only the healthiest. The boy is astonished when he finds himself among them. He squints against the light. Everything seems too bright, too hot, too _much_ , now. He wants it to go away, would welcome the darkness of the hold. Somehow, he knows that won't happen.

Someone yells and he opens his eyes. There are birds wheeling in the sky, wings spread wide and blinding white against the _blueblueblue_ sky. He would almost think them seagulls, if they weren't so large.

A man - one of the traders - stands against the railing and hoists a gun over his shoulder. He isn't a mage. When a whistle sounds, the birds descend in droves, blocking out the sky and sending shadows dancing across the deck. The boy watches as the man steadies himself and then-

A crack, a screech, another flurry. Birds drop to the shore in clumps, their brethren further infuriated by their deaths. The slave ship continues onwards. The closer to the shore they get, the angrier the birds. Absently, the boy wonders if they have nests nearby. Then, he wonders whether guano mining is as large an industry here as it was in his last life. In the end, he decides he doesn't want to know. Instead, he watches as more birds hit the steadily approaching beach, their white feathers stained with blood. Distantly, he hears some of the prisoners screaming. Thinking back on it, perhaps they aren't the healthiest - rather, he thinks they might have been the most expendable of the bunch. They are the _bait_. Somewhere, he feels a burning sort of rage.

The massacre ends with the screeched death throws of the last bird, its wings beating against the beach and throwing sand into the air. The ship swings around with a speed and accuracy impossible to match without magic. They travel up the coast, carcasses new and old littering the scenery on their left, the sea a dark and troubled blue on their right. He is almost willing to believe that everything in this world is angry; Lonskot is, as always, the exception.

The journey up the coast is long. Waves beat against the ship and the mage's grip on the magic winds propelling them slips occasionally. He feels sick. The desire to vomit had been a constant companion whilst he was in the hold; here, where the rocking is more obvious and he can set eyes on the waves buffeting them, the burning in his throat leaves his eyes watering and his fingers twitching. He sways occasionally.

Lonskot shuffles his feet and his chains jangle. The boy realises that at some point he had drifted. He blinks. Behind the group, a woman in brightly dyed robes pushed the group forwards. They shamble as one towards the gang plank, a thin stream of bodies trailing from the ship onto land. The boy's eyes sting from the salt in the air and his nose is raw. His clothes are damp. A light breeze crashes through hair he hasn't seen in weeks, drying the short strands into sharp, salt-coated points. The same breeze flits between the prisoners, playing with one woman's trailing skirts, dragging through a man's open wounds, then jumping and bounding away from them to sway in the palm trees on the shore. Sand kicks up in its wake and lands on the wooden slats of the boardwalk.

Ahead of them, at the end of the wooden walkway, stands a man. His coat is old and worn, a faded shade of red once favoured by pirates and soldiers alike. He stands without care for the crowds behind him, as if he hasn't noticed the bustling marketplace shifting and gasping with new wonders and old regulars. Striped tents and painted stalls are scattered between more solid buildings.

In the centre of the square sits a stage. It draws the largest crowd, one packed with all walks of humanity and beyond. There are mages, warriors, slavers, pirates, fortune tellers, land owners, lords, ladies, everyday people; all of them shouting and haggling - over what, though, is unclear.

The man before them smiles, his teeth glinting in the sun. He grabs hold of the manacles shackling the girl at the front of the line and tugs. They stumble and trip in order to keep up with the pace he sets, their feet hobbled by the chains on them. Lonskot starts to mutter under his breath, though too quietly to be heard by the boy. He thinks it might be a prayer.

(That he is grasping Lonskot's shirt in his too small hands, tripping over his heels and nearly standing on him when they pause, makes no difference to his hearing. The crowds here are loud and the light piercing his eyes is no less disorienting than it was when he first opened them.)

The crowd by the stage parts for them almost biblically, a sea of people jeering on either side. They are led to the stage and hauled up some stairs set into the side of the platform. Suddenly, he understands what is being sold here - or rather, _who_ is being sold.

They are stood in rows, their chains snaking back and forth around them.

One of the mages lining the front of the stage steps forward and raises a hand: the shackles holding the girl at the front slip away from the chain holding them, disconnecting her from the human centipede behind her. She stumbles backwards until a tall man - so tall his face is hidden, his hat nearly brushing the tent above them, his feet the size of a giant's, his hands large enough they could hold her entire head - grabs her wrists, dragging to the centre of the stage and making the crowd roar. Then the bidding begins.

After the girl is sold to a leather clad witch and the emaciated man behind her is sold to a man with too many dogs, the boy starts to lose track of the world around him. It takes Lonskot being dragged to the front for him to wake up, and he nearly shrieks as his hand is dislodged from Lonskot's shirt. He can't go, they can't take him, it's not fair don't they understand he needs him _needs him_ don't go _I can't lose you too_ (who did I lose?) _don't go_ please stay-

They take him. The boy wakes up. The world crashes around him. He sees colour filter into his view: sees the red of the tent above him, the brown of the stage beneath him, the dull orange of the pavers in the market square in front of him, the green _greengreen_ of the trees in the distance and the blinding blue of the sky outside. He wants to scream and he wants to cry and he wants to go home and _she wasn't meant for this, make it go away, she was dead and safe_.

He blinks and the world dulls again. He can barely move - can barely think, can barely breathe - as the bidding starts. The prices are low (he feels insulted, don't they know how amazing-). A man in a white suit, his hat sitting low on his head, buys the most important person in the boy's world. He feels a scream growing in his lungs. At the edges of his vision streaks of orange start to creep in.

Then his chains fall away. He _runs_.

And then he isn't running, his chest feels too small, his arms won't move, and _oh, that's a hand around him_. It hits him, quite sharply, that he had underestimated the size of the man before him. He isn't a giant, he's a _titan_. (She remembers someone like this. He was kind though, kind and small and then large and brave, and she wonders if she'll ever see him the same way again. Wonders if he'll still seem safe now that she knows the power in someone this large.)

The shouts are louder and just as indecipherable, but all that matters is that the noise ends after a loud bang and a crash, and then the highest price yet is offered, and the boy finds himself standing before the white suited man. He hadn't been expecting that. (Who wants a slave that runs away? The orange woman would have sneered at him, would have told him to fight.)

He can just make out Lonskot in the crowd of manacled bodies lined up behind the white suited man. The man looks down at him ( _how dare he! he has no right, no right to look down on her, she'll show them-_ ) and then he laughs. The same mage from before - the one who had broken the chains - appears at his side. She raises her hands again and then abruptly drags them down. The boy watches in morbid fascination as a new chain grows from his linked hands to join the one attached to Lonskot. He wonders how she did it.

Did she make metal? Manipulate it? Twist it into being or pull on what was there? Was the metal itself magical, or was it only _shaped_ with magic? Does she affect the atoms around her? None of it makes sense and yet he finds himself in awe. He wants to know, wants to ask how she did it. Instead, he feels her kick him towards the group of slaves before him. The magic and curiosity of the moment vanishes. (He feels that rage from earlier return, burning brighter, hotter, but still not ready.) He scowls, grabs Lonskot's shirt again.

The world is an unfair place. He knows this. And he _hates_ it.

* * *

The woman perches herself on a low roof and watches through a window on the building next to her. The boy inside can't see her orange glow, can't see the cat twining around her feet. He is far too focused on the man in front of him brandinshing what looks like a large stamp. He waves it in front of the boy and watches as he shrinks back in fear. Something about that brand seems awfully final. The woman growls.

A pair of hands reaches around the boy from behind. He writhes, jumping and squirming, desperate. The man with the brand cackles.

It happens quickly - too quickly for something so damning. A hand snakes out, quick as a viper, and then his face is marked. There, across the bridge of his nose, lies a sickeningly familiar line. She's seen it before, on the faces of desperate, fleeing souls - the same ones she'd occasionally hunted down and returned to a tanned man waiting patiently by his slave ship in the port. She wonders how they made it to Arma: did they swim? Or did he bring them?

Whatever the answer, it won't make her any happier.

So she shifts forward, then slips from the roof and across the alley and phases through the wall to stand in front of the boy. She inspects his new mark, watches him hiss as it burns with foreign magic. Do they know his worth? She doubts it. And then she looks up, away from his nose, and watches an entire society of emotions flicker across his face. Mostly, he looks horrified. He seems to understand what's happened. She is, begrudgingly, impressed. Few children his age would understand the implications of that brand.

But there! Behind the horror is a lurking, burning anger. It nearly knocks her back because she _recognises_ that anger. Achingly, viscerally. That's _her_ anger and _how dare he wear it_. She wants to shout at him and rage - again. But she's done that once and he'd not know it's purpose so she seethes instead and watches his fear in the face of her outrage.

(After the horror and the anger, the realisation and the fear, the pain and loss and despair and desperation; after the things that are known and expected, after all of them, there comes a sharp sort of expression: it is solid and certain, almost angry and not quite entirely stubborn.

This is a promise, an oath, an _I-will-prove-them-wrong_ and a _you-will-regret-this_.

But men who have never had to fight for something like freedom, who have never fought a slave, have only beaten them down before they were strong enough - these men will not recognise such a face. She sees the boy and his determination, and knows that although he isn't _her_ boy, he is enough for her to stay.)


	7. sorrow tastes the same on any tongue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title comes from a song by David Gilmour: "In Any Tongue". Near the beginning there's a quote from a poem; it comes from "Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep", by Mary Elizabeth Frye.
> 
> Hope you like this one. There's a bit more of a plot now, and you get a training scene. Yay! (Maybe?)
> 
> This story has 588 hits, and I think that's just so cool. I don't even know 588 people! That's amazing! Thank you for reading this and I hope you enjoy it.

There’s something distinctly wrong with sweating away under the scorching sun, watching the blue sky get impossibly bluer, staining your fingers brown with dirt, and knowing that there won’t be tea or cake or lemonade or a mojito waiting.

The boy’s fingers are raw where rough dirt and spiny plants have scrubbed the skin away. His sweat makes the wounds sting. The back of his neck is hot and bloody, popped blisters leaving new skin unprotected beneath the unforgiving sun. He misses long sleeves and hats and sunscreen, misses the worn-out gardening gloves she’d leave in a box by the back door. Her granddaughter had loved to garden with her. He wonders what the girl is doing now; hopes that she doesn’t cry over an old woman’s grave.

(There’s a poem for that, said at funerals and whispered in university lecture halls, groaned over in high school class rooms and sobbed at by bereaved relatives. He can’t remember it, not really. It’s one of those things that sticks but doesn’t really, and he spends days agonising over words he can’t fully remember. When had he last been to a funeral? Who was it for? He can’t recall.

Sometimes, he remembers fragments: _Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there. I did not die._

It doesn’t make things any better.)

Nights are short and cold. He shivers under thin blankets, huddling closer to Lonskot and hoping neither of them will freeze. The days are worse, though.

They are woken up before the sun, whips cracking through the air and fists banging on unstable shelters. They shuffle out of feeble lean-tos, joints stiff, and by the time the sun touches the horizon, nearly every slave on the plantation is either kneeling in the dirt or swinging a machete at the plants. Today, the boy has a machete: he’s been lopping pineapples off their stems since dawn and his wrist has locked up. He can’t feel his knees.

Lonskot is somewhere in the fields, either dragging a basket whilst someone younger swings the knife, or digging through the earth, weeding what desperate plants aren’t killed by the strangely selective poison dispersed by one of the three mages owned by the man in white. The boy tries not to worry about him.

Occasionally, he’ll blink or look to the side or wipe sweat from his eyes and he’ll see the woman in orange watching him. She hasn’t spoken since he was sold. He worries that perhaps the brand across his nose has reminded her that she doesn’t like him. (The boy tries not to think about the brand, either.)

The pineapples piling up behind him remind him of different times. _She_ had loved pineapples, their taste something exotic after the bland flavours of her childhood. He remembers sitting on a beach, the sun dipping below the horizon, and sipping on a cocktail whilst some young waiter had offered her roasted pineapple. She’d loved it.

The boy blinks again.

The woman scowls a little harder.

Another pineapple hits the ground.

The sun burns brighter.

And the day continues.

* * *

It takes a month for one of the other slaves (and that thought _aches_ ) to work up the courage to steal something from the main house. He’s caught before the day’s end and lead around the fields like some kind of trophy. They make an example of him the next morning: he sits there, chained to a stump, thirsty and bloody, and the rest of them have to watch as they _cut off his hands_. Blood paints the ground.

For weeks afterwards, they have to look at the mounted hands waiting by the tool shed, a reminder and a warning. (The boy doesn’t know what happened to the slave: he hadn’t seen him again, and he doesn’t know how long it takes someone to bleed out. Maybe he’s dead.)

Somewhere in the middle of all this, the orange woman had reappeared. And perhaps that’s a good thing, because a day after the now rotting hands are taken down from their post, the slave comes back. Only, he doesn’t, not really. Because he’s dead, and dead people don’t come back, and they certainly don’t _talk_. And the boy knows he’s dead. He’s checked: no one else sees the returneddeadnotdead, no one else hears as he screams at the man who had taken his hands, no one else can see the flickering form of his _muddybrowndarkgrey_ soul and the way it tries to stay in the same shape it’s always known. (It doesn’t work – he can see where it unravels, where it claws at itself in desperation.)

The woman comes back just in time to see him scream. Because the dead should stay dead _should stay dead shouldn’t be here oh god he shouldn’t be here and now they can come back too what is this hell oh dear god please_. He screams and screams and screams.

(Lonskot sits with him and waits. He’s too good for him, this man who treats him with such care.)

The screaming only stops when one of the foremen has enough and drags him outside into the dirt and the mud and beats him until even breathing is a chore. The woman in orange watches with a scowl. (If it seems a little deeper, a little harsher, when she looks at the man pinning him to the ground – well, the boy is mad already, he tells himself she doesn’t really care.) She’s waiting for him when he’s tossed to the side. He comes up spinning, blood filling his mouth and head throbbing worse than ever before. (If she waits with him until his vision is only slightly broken, and his head is more a thrumming than a pounding war drum, and the blood in his nose has stopped running, she won’t admit it. He won’t remember anyway – he’s a fool.)

She stays for the next few days, watching him, waiting. She’s more obvious now. (Some nights, he’ll wake up and see her face inches from his; others, he’ll sit and wonder where she went, and why the room feels colder without her.)

Five days.

He kneels in the dirt. The sun rises. The sun sets. He sleeps in the dirt.

He wades through too tall plants, beating back the native undergrowth. The sun rises. The sun sets. He sleeps in the dirt.

He kneels in the dirt. The sun rises. The sun sets. He sleeps in the dirt.

He kneels in the dirt. The sun rises. The sun sets. He sleeps in the dirt.

He picks loose skin from his hand and picks up the machete again. The sun rises. The sun sets. He sleeps in the dirt.

He kneels in the dirt.

And then she speaks to him.

* * *

Lonskot worries for the boy. If he’d been quiet on the boat, he’s near mute now. He doesn’t even talk in his sleep anymore. (The stories he used to weave as easy as breathing are a thing of the past, and sometimes Lonskot will wonder if they ever really happened.) The boy is something else now, and Loskot worries.

When he wakes up to screams, he doesn’t know what to do. They drag the boy away, and he watches as young limbs thrash and mud stained nails dig into too-strong arms. He wishes he could help.

Instead, he holds the boy through nights of rasping breaths and helps him stand when the morning chill leaves their knees and ankles too stiff to bend. He hopes it’s enough. He slips scraps from his plate to the boy’s and hopes it’s enough. He pulls him closer when the nights grow colder and hopes it’s enough. He holds him down when his screams threaten to burst free from his clamped shut jaw and hopes it’s enough. He whispers stories from the old days into his ear and hopes it’s enough.

(He knows it will never be enough.)

* * *

She wants to teach him.

“You can see him, can’t you? Just like you can see me. Want to know how to do it on purpose?”

It’s barely an offer and he takes just a little too long thinking about it.

“Well? You’ll be able to get out of here; be able to run. Isn’t that what you want?”

He grumbles a little before ultimately agreeing. It’s not like he could ever say no.

* * *

A flash, a screech, a sob. The slave’s soul – _muddybrowndarkgrey_ , desperate to stay the same, losing its shape anyway – vanishes in the brightest ray of light the boy’s ever seen. He blinks a few times, trying to scrub the afterimages away. When he turns to face the woman, she grins at him.

He just exorcised a spirit. A ghost. _He got rid of a ghost_. He’s so cool! Can he do it again? What if he-

The boy topples over in a dead faint. The woman laughs.

He’ll get there.

* * *

They’ve been sitting here for an hour now. He could have been _asleep_. Instead, he’s trying to meditate. And he’s failing. Really, he’s been failing to meditate for the entire hour that they’ve been sitting here. He just can’t get the hang of it. His mind is not a quiet place. Her mind hadn’t been either. She’d been busy, always. Her mother had despaired of her and her teachers had yelled and her father had sighed, and none of it had made a lick of difference: quiet was for other people.

It doesn’t help that when he closes his eyes and tries not to think all he can remember is the hideous, drowning nothingness of death. _She remembers dying and she hates it_. He remembers her death: the exhaustion, the lingering bitterness, the desperation, the harsh _need_ to see her granddaughter one more time. And he remembers dying and all of those feelings fading away. He had been – _she had been_ – they had been nothing and he _hates it_.

Meditation seems a lost cause.

The woman in orange finds it frustrating.

( _She finds it frustrating? How dare she! She should try living in spite of her death!_ )

He growls and sighs and shuts his eyes and tries again.

One more time.

Maybe this time, he’ll manage it.

* * *

Seeing the dead is easy. _Finding_ the dead is another matter entirely. She wants him to hunt them down, describes it like he’s a dog with a scent. It frightens him a little. (Who was she, that she found it easier to think like an animal than a human?) He tries. It never seems to work. The meditation is supposed to help, but the lack of improvement there seems to translate into a lack of ability everywhere else. It _gnaws_ at him.

And then. And then it _works_. He doesn’t know how. One minute he’s drowning, losing himself in another re-death, fighting to get out – and then he can smell them. There’s Lonskot, dry, faded, _leatherwoodsand_. The woman: _orangesspicewineblood_. The souls around him are all tinged with the same _mouldyforgottenhopesweat_ scent, and the guards outside have similar traces of something like _hungerpainanger_ , or maybe _dirtlavendershoepolishgin_. Whatever it is, it hangs around them like a cloud.

(He can’t smell himself. Is it for the same reason that he can’t see his own soul? The observation is noted down with all the rest in that corner of his mind which he reserves for questions he’ll never get to ask.)

It takes a while, but he manages to differentiate the woman from the rest. Where before he could find her because she was familiar, now it’s that, out of all the souls in this tiny hut, she’s the only one to smell of death.

Only, it’s not that dramatic. ‘Death’ isn’t blood and bone, isn’t rats and plague, isn’t pain and anguish and desperation; death is like stars, and she smells of _ironfirebloodsulfursparks_. She twists around like a fireworks display and leaves him lightheaded. Death smells sharp, and familiar, and far nicer than it should. Death smells like clean water on the ocean and fresh cut grass in a desert. He wonders what it says about him that death is perhaps his favourite smell to date.


	8. putting out fire with gasoline

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one took a while. It's one of the biggest plot points I have mapped out, and so I took a lot of time agonising over it. In the end, though, I just wanted to finish it. So, here you go!
> 
> This chapter title comes from the song "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)" by David Bowie. It just seemed appropriate.

There isn’t much cause for hunting down the dead. Most days, the boy will practice, will find them, and then will stop and move onto the next thing. The woman doesn’t seem to mind.

(Sometimes she will get this look on her face – a kind of longing desperation, a hunger – and he’ll think _what did you do before this? what did you do before death was all you knew?_ He never asks, and he knows she’d never answer.)

It helps, though: finding the dead and seeing the dead; it means he doesn’t scream when another ghost comes shambling through the walls, soul tearing at itself. He’s been wondering about that. The dead seem to grab and scratch and tear at themselves, pulling on loose threads like old woolen jumpers and scratching at lumps and splinters like un-sanded wood. This time, he does ask the woman.

“It’s to do with the shape,” she says. “They can’t stand to lose their shape – they want to be what they were in life – and so they pull themselves in different directions, trying to fill in the spaces. But nothing will hold shape quite like a body.”

He thinks about it, and then: “What about new bodies? What happens if they decide to take another one?”

“Ah.” She grins, sharp and thirsty. “Then, we come in. Possessions, infestations, manifestations, hauntings – they can all be fixed. Manifestations and hauntings are easiest: generally, you just find what the ghost wants, or you beat it enough that it goes away. Possessions and infestations, though, that’s where it gets tricky.”

She doesn’t speak for a bit, waiting for something perhaps. So he asks: “What do you do then?”

She hums for a moment then falls silent again. When she looks at him next, she’s looking for something. “You won’t like it,” she says. “In fact, I think you’ll hate it. I’ll tell you anyway.”

(She makes it sound like a gift, this knowledge, and she was right, he does hate it.)

What follows is an hour of lectures. She tells him how to grab a soul – much like the exorcism they performed – and pull it out of something. How to sink his nails into intangible flesh and _pull_. How to know when the last threads of resistance give out, and he can yank with abandon. How to know the strength of the connection between a spirit and its host. It sounds so practical, so methodical.

And then afterwards he thinks about it. And – what if the soul was meant to be in that body? Could you pull it anyway? Could you leave someone floating around, trying to find their shape despite not being dead? How long does it take for the body to die if the soul isn’t there? _Can_ they die? Is it possible to lock someone out of their own body?

He wants to throw up. He wants to run away. He wants to cry.

Instead, he sits and he listens.

And, at the end, with all his thoughts whirling and spinning and colliding like drunken dancers, he asks: “What about you? Why are you still here? _How_ are you still here?”

She hesitates. It’s strange: he hasn’t seen that before. If she doesn’t talk, it’s purposeful, intentional. This looks something like _fear_. Now he isn’t sure if he wants to know at all.

But then she resolves her dilemma, and she leans forward, and she tells him, “I’ve been eating my own magic. What was left after I died – I grabbed it, and I kept it, and now I use it to keep my shape. It – I can – this is – it has to do with my magic.” She leaves it at that.

And he nods, and he smiles, and he doesn’t ask anymore questions. And he most certainly doesn’t think about the fact that that was a lie.

* * *

When he can’t sleep, the boy will ask Lonskot for a story. Perhaps it’s some leftover of who she was before, or perhaps it’s a memory from the boy that used to be, but it comforts him. Tonight, he asks Lonskot about his home.

It starts as they all do: “Once upon a time…”

* * *

Once upon a time, there was a village by the sea. It was small, old. It had seen better days. In this village lived a boy. He had a sister and a mother and a father and a brother. It was all rather ordinary.

_That’s a boring story_.

_Hush_.

Now, in this village there was a tradition: a child was given a name by its parents, but at some point in its life that name would change. Changing the name to fit the child was something that had been done for a thousand years, and would continue on in future generations.

This particular boy would soon be fifteen. In all his years of life, he had done very little to earn his name. He was by no means a lazy boy, but he wasn’t very talented, either. Most of his days were spent helping his mother with the housework and cleaning up after the local baker. He wasn’t particularly good at either of these things.

_What kind of person isn’t good at cleaning?_

One day, his brother – who was several years older than him – fell sick. This meant that he couldn’t help their father on the fishing boat. Instead, the boy would go out and _he_ would help with the fishing. This was mainly due to a lack of options, as his mother was rather busy and his sister suffered from motion sickness. And so, the boy went out in the boat.

It wasn’t an exciting thing, sitting in the boat, but it wasn’t altogether boring, either. He found he rather liked watching the flow and twist of the waves, the dancing of the birds overhead. It was peaceful.

The boy and his father waited and waited, but no fish came. The day before there had been fish, and the day before that. His father worried it was the boy. The boy worried it was his fault. And then, out of the depths, there came a flurry of whirling, leaping, flashing movement. Scales caught the noonday sun and flashed like stars. Then, as quickly as they came, they were gone. The boy and his father waited and waited, but the fish didn’t return. The started to turn back to the shore. The waves slapped against the boat. The sun burned. The birds flitted across the clouds. As they came in view of the wharf, a shadow came twisting through the shallows. At first, it seemed to be a fish, but then it grew larger. It crept closer and closer, fins cutting through the water, and then it was a shark. Large, dark grey, scars littering its back. It was a sea monster come to life. The boy was very nearly frightened.

But then fear turned to wonder, and he started to lean out of the boat. His father was slow to notice and quick to act: as the boy leaned too far and the boat rocked, his father pushed him back. But then the boat rocked again and out fell the father. The shark was closer now. The boy scrambled for the spear resting in the bottom of the boat whilst his father spun in circles watching the shark. It slipped ever closer. Now the boy was frightened.

The shark moved. It was fast – too fast to see, too fast to catch – and it had his father in its jaws before either of them could scream. And then it was swimming away. The boy could see red streaks in the water. (He tried not to think of his father’s leg, flesh breaking and tearing, blood gushing. He failed.) As the shark swam further and further away, the boy grew desperate. He wanted his father back. He would get his father back. Perhaps it was childish determination, or perhaps it was luck; whatever it was, he threw the spear and it landed, with a splash and a thud, right in the side of the shark. If it could, it would have roared. As it was, it released his father with a heave and then it spun, angry, hungry, and lunged towards the boat. The boy was terrified.

He twisted and searched for a second spear. There! The shark was nearer now. He grabbed it with both hands and threw it. He missed. He found a third spear – the last, a spare – and wished. He wished for his life, and his father’s, and for safety back on land. And then he threw for the third and final time. Now, whether his wish came true, or whether it was the magic of three, the boy will never know. What he does know is this: he threw the spear, it sailed through the air, and then it landed, with force he hadn’t expected, right in the eye of the shark. It seemed to take a moment to notice, to realise what had happened, and then. it. died. And the boy started to cry.

It was some hours later that the boy and his father finally returned home, injured and triumphant, with a shark that could feed the family for weeks. The boy also returned with a name. It was a name that suited him, that matched his great feat; a name in the old tongue, a name for something perhaps heroic, perhaps lucky. For his throw, and his accuracy, they named him ‘Lonskot’: one who hits the target.

_That was you?_

_Yes._

_Was the shark very big?_

_Enormous._

_What did it taste like?_

_Fish._

_Really?_

_Yes._

* * *

She wants him to grab a soul. He can’t do it. It twists something in him, makes it burn and swirl, acid leaking onto his tongue. He wants to throw up. He feels like he’s choking. He wants to cry. She tells him to grab the soul.

He does it, and it is the worst thing he has ever done. He can see the body – the _person_ – shuddering, shaking, shivering. They look half mad, like a fish out of water, or an eel in a bucket. He drops them, drops his hand, shakes and shivers, sobs. He can’t do it. She snarls at him.

No.

No, he won’t do it. This isn’t – you can’t take someone’s soul. He wasn’t supposed to be here, and _she remembers the church she went to as a child, remembers the sermons, your immortal soul_ , and you can’t take their soul like that, what right does he have? He can’t do it. He won’t do it.

The woman in orange sneers at him. She’s wrong. He isn’t pathetic. Morals are a good thing.

“Grow up,” she says, as if taking another person’s soul is some kind of rite of passage.

He’s going to throw up.

* * *

Lonskot is worried. The boy had been talking again, recently. He’d asked for stories, had told some of his own – the strange ones, the ones he whispers and seems to only half know. Really, he’d been getting better.

And now he’s silent again.

He doesn’t talk at all, just stares at some distant point, wracked with shivers and pale as the dead. He cries in his sleep. The foremen are getting bored of it.

Lonskot doesn’t know what to do this time.

* * *

The boy hasn’t been keeping track of time lately. It passes and he carries on, and he hasn’t really noticed yet. His hair is longer though. He catches it out of the corner of his eye sometimes, like some malevolent beast waiting to devour him. (He shouldn’t think of hair like this.)

He asks Lonskot to cut it with the machete one day and refuses to look at the strands that fall at his feet. (She told herself she was fine, fine, _fine_. So fine. She can’t even look at her own hair. His hair. Her hair. _The hair_.)

He tells himself he’s fine.

The woman stays away for the most part. He wonders if this is some kind of cycle: she speaks, they get along, he does something wrong, she leaves, he stops talking. He tells himself it’s fine. (She pretends this isn’t the kind of relationship she’d warn her granddaughter away from, the kind she remembers from a childhood with unhappy parents and war-torn siblings. She pretends that _he_ is fine. If it’s not her, then maybe it isn’t real.)

It doesn’t last.

They grab him at the end of the day, when everyone else is filing back towards the huts. There’s a shout, and then they drag him towards the main house. He might be terrified. He isn’t sure.

They tie him to a stump (he recognises this stump, knows the blood stains, _oh god this is the stump_ , this is where they tied the slave who was caught stealing, _oh god his hands_ , he can’t, this isn’t, _whyarethey-_ ) and leave him there. He doesn’t count the hours – it hardly seems worth it. When the man in the white suit appears, the boy is barely conscious. He’s been fading in and out for half an hour now, and he might never come back.

The sharp sting of the slap to his face is enough to jolt him back to whatever nightmare this is. _He wants to cry_. The man in white tells him a thief is around and his candlesticks are missing.

(The boy wonders what use candlesticks are to a slave.)

The man tells him that if he doesn’t admit to it, they’ll cut off his head. If he does, they’ll only take his hands; he might live. (The boy can’t see any side to this where he benefits.)

He says it wasn’t him.

And they bring out the machete.

He might not be fine after all.

* * *

She comes looking for her boy only to find him missing. The old man is there, leaning against a wall, smelling of fear. The guards are mostly gone. The slaves are huddled in a corner, the same shivering mass she saw on the boat. The old man might know – he likes the boy. She reaches out, ready to grab and pull and threaten, but – she isn’t here right now, not really. She can’t take someone else’s soul like she used to, not if she wants to stay in one piece. And definitely not with boy so far away.

She scowls.

(Motes of sand rise in tiny dust devils in corners of the room. The light through the windows seems to stutter. The thin walls start to creak. Lonskot shifts uneasily.)

Outside the hut, she glances around. There is nothing for miles save acres of plantation. She pads unnecessarily on silent feet along paths in between plants, making her way slowly to the top of the hill. There, like a child’s toy, sits the main house. The windows glint in the afternoon sun and the white marble of the exterior columns is blinding.

She hates it immediately, with the kind of venomous anger usually reserved for Hartol.

As she glides closer, the noises start. First is the yelling. The air is thick with strangled screams, desperation and fear. Whilst she can’t quite smell things anymore, she knows with everything in her that someone has thrown up – vomit is distinctive like that.

As she slips through the thick wooden door the sobbing and the rattling start. She moves faster.

In a blink she’s inside another room, the high ceiling painted pink and gold by the sun, the chandelier glinting, the curtains billowing in a barely there breeze – it’s beautiful, and completely out of place next to the screaming, chained-up child and the soulless corpse beside him. There is a knife – no, a sword – on the floor and the man in white is backing away. He seems…not frightened, but wary. She wonders what it would take to frighten a man like that.

(She thinks it would be easy, if you were clever about it. He seems like that kind of man.)

Three of the remaining members of the room decide to rush towards the boy all at once. There is pause, a break, a lull, and then they drop – marionettes with no master, their limbs splayed unnaturally. In the silence, the heaving breaths and choked sobs of the child seem all the louder.

She scowls.

Drifting behind him, she leans down to whisper in his ear.

“Can you see them? They can’t hurt you – not like this. Take them _all_. You know you can.”

He doesn’t hear her; he whimpers and cowers instead.

She reaches for him, wants to grab him, knows that she can’t – and then she does.

The explosion happens in seconds, magic ricocheting out from the epicentre, splashing the corners of the room and leaving them shimmering in the light. The spirits around them – the man with the knife, the three who’d attacked the boy and a sad looking old man, his hands missing at the wrist – screech and writhe, melting into the atmosphere. At the far end of the room, backed against the wall, the man in white starts to scream.

And then…nothing.

* * *

He wakes up with his hands still attached and a fire starting somewhere in the room. The smell of smoke is comforting – parties and gatherings, warm food and good company, soot in her hair. The rattling chains around his wrists are less reassuring. He pulls at them but they stay firm.

Glancing around him he sees nothing but four bodies beside him and a pyre at the opposite end of the room. He doesn’t want to think about what might be fueling this particular fire. The lack of ghosts is almost disconcerting, before he remembers that the woman had left in another strop. (He hopes she comes back this time.)

There’s a shuffling noise behind him and he tries to turn. The chains keep him mostly immobile, but he can twist far enough to see a familiar face.

“Lonskot!”

The old man smiles at him. (It looks strained.) In the smoke and the low light he almost looks like another ghost.

Lonskot looks thoughtful before asking, “Is there a key for the chains?”

The boy nods franticly and tries to point with his feet towards the man with the knife. (He tries not to remember the way it had shone as it rose above his hands.) Lonskot seems to understand and begins searching through the pockets of the man’s rather bulky coat. In less than a minute a key is being pushed into the lock on the manacles and the boy’s hands are free. He laughs. (He wants to cry.)

At the other end of the room the curtains catch fire. Something spits and crackles, and the glass starts to shimmer.

“Come on!” The boy grabs onto Lonskot and starts to pull him outside. “We have to go. We can leave!”

The pair make it to the heavy wooden door just as the carpet catches fire. As the door opens under their combined weight, the sudden rush of air sets the flames roaring higher still. They run.

Stumbling through the fields of pineapples, spiked leaves dragging at their shins and beads of blood welling from the cuts, the boy feels free for the first time since waking up on that ship. ( _She feels free for the first time since waking up in a hospital bed after collapsing in the middle of the afternoon, chained down by a diagnosis and optimistic relatives._ ) This is something he could fight for.

And then they hit the boundary line and the freedom is real. The only things left of their time in slavery are the brands across their noses, the raw skin around his wrists and the dirt staining their skin. Two of those will fade with time. (He’ll think of something for the tattoo. Could he change it, perhaps? Either way, he’ll have to make it less recognizable.) He looks back and laughs.

And then he chokes. Because Lonskot running across the boundary with him was expected, but Lonskot running _clean through the fence_ was not. That isn’t something that human beings can do. If they could, he and Lonskot would be long gone, having escaped within a day of their capture.

He knows that his friend can’t phase through matter.

He should have noticed before.

Lonskot can’t run as fast as him.

Lonskot wasn’t coughing in the smoke.

Lonskot didn’t open the heavy, weighs-more-than-he-can-lift door to get in.

Lonskot is only one colour now.

The boy is an idiot. (And his friend is dead.)

* * *

It takes an hour of lying in the dirt for the boy to get himself anywhere near capable of functioning. It _hurts_ – hurts to know that he hadn’t even noticed that his own friend was dead.

It’s that thought which pulls him upright. He hadn’t noticed. (How awful he is, how dreadful, what good are his eyes, _she should try harder_ , why can’t he get even this right, _she hadn’t seen_ , _how disrespectful can you be_ …) He has to make this right.

He can’t bring Lonskot back, but the least he can do is offer him a proper burial. (And the other slaves – they deserve freedom. How cruel of him to forget them.)

It takes so much longer to walk back than it did to run away. His feet drag with every step and he can feel the weight around his neck clinging tighter, growing heavier. But he keeps walking.

Somewhere along the way he starts to look for other ghosts and he can feel the way his eyes flicker in the darkness. He finds none.

When they reach the huts, the shouting inside is frantic. The house on the hill is burning bright enough to match the sun and the slaves aren’t idiots. It’s lucky that he kept the key for his manacles.

As they’re freed, the people around him start to run. One at a time, and then in pairs, and then in groups, they flood across the fields, trampling plants and earth beneath their feet. He can almost smell the joy on them, the hope and freedom. It makes him want to cry.

Once the last slave is free, the boy starts to search. There are bodies in most of the huts – poor living conditions will do that – but none of them are Lonskot. He nearly forgets that he can simply ask the man himself. (It feels so wrong when he looks at the ghost of his friend and says, “Where is your body?”)

He finds it on the path leading up the hill, undamaged by the still distant fire and undisturbed by the fleeing masses. He pulls the man up by his arms, slings them over his shoulders, and starts to drag him. He isn’t tall enough to carry him, and isn’t strong enough to do more than shuffle along beneath the weight of his dead friend. The corpse seems to grow heavier with every step.

It takes longer than both the initial exit and the return trip put together, but the boy, the body and the ghost make it to the boundary once again. There, the boy starts to pile together sticks and branches and leaves and twigs. This is the second pyre he’s made today; the first that he’s made knowingly.

Halfway through the construction process, the woman returns. She looks brighter, more solid. He’d be more interested if he weren’t so close to passing out. She nods at him, then joins Lonskot in his silent vigil over his own body. The boy goes back to building the pyre.

It’s only once the mound is finished and the body is positioned that the boy realises he can’t start a fire. He’s closer than ever to crying.

But the woman is there to help – like always – and she shows him how, if he pushes enough energy towards her, she can start the fire for him. It seems like the kind of revelation which should elicit something from him, but he’s just too tired to care.

The flames are as bright as the ones at the house and hot enough to burn from three paces away.

* * *

It’s as he’s watching the flickering light that he feels Lonskot settle next to him. The warmth which had always accompanied the man in life is noticeably absent in death. The old man hums quietly as if to clear his non-existent throat and then he speaks: “You’ve been needing a name for a while now, haven’t you?”

The boy nods in answer.

“Do you remember the story I told you? The one about earning names? You do? Good. I think you’ve easily earned yours by now.”

Lonskot looks to the woman as if for conformation. She looks confused yet nods anyway.

Lonskot smiles. “In that case, for your bravery, and your loss, and your strength, I name you Bickslow: one who fights.”

* * *

On an island off the coast of Enca, a boy and two ghosts sit and watch a funeral pyre. The flames burn for two days before finally settling as ashes. The boy spends that time sleeping and eating pineapples, barely saying a word. The two ghosts watch on as he sinks further into himself.

And then, on the third day, the boy wakes up and starts to walk.

Bickslow has never wanted to die, and this is an island for the dead. It’s time to leave.

A boy and two ghosts steal a boat and leave the island, watching from the waves as the setting sun burns the land red and the ocean gold. _It’s almost another kind of fire_ , Bickslow thinks to himself.


End file.
